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</ 

University  of  California  •  Berkeley 


(Enos  3U 


YOUR  NATIONAL  PARKS.  Illustrated. 
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HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


THE  STORY  OF  A 
THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 


THE  STORY  OF  A 
THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 


BY 

ENOS  A.  MILLS 

ILLUSTRATED 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
fctoergibe  j 


COPYRIGHT,   IQOQ  AND   1914,  BY  BNOS  A.  MILLS 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  VETERAN  WESTERN  YELLOW  PINE 

Frontispiece 

SOME  OF  "  OLD  PINE'S  "  NEIGHBORS  .  8 
CLIFF  DWELLINGS  ON  THE  MESA  VERDE  24 
THE  MESA  VERDE  36 


THE   STORY  OF  A 
THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 


THE  peculiar  charm  and  fascination 
that  trees  exert  over  many  people  I 
had  always  felt  from  childhood,  but 
it  was  that  great  nature-lover,  John 
Muir,  who  first  showed  me  how  and 
where  to  learn  their  language.  Few 
trees,  however,  ever  held  for  me  such 
an  attraction  as  did  a  gigantic  and 
3 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

venerable  yellow  pine  which  I  dis- 
covered one  autumn  day  several  years 
ago  while  exploring  the  southern 
Rockies.  It  grew  within  sight  of  the 
Cliff-Dwellers'  Mesa  Verde,  which 
stands  at  the  corner  of  four  States, 
and  as  I  came  upon  it  one  evening 
just  as  the  sun  was  setting  over  that 
mysterious  tableland,  its  character 
and  heroic  proportions  made  an  im- 
pression upon  me  that  I  shall  never 
forget,  and  which  familiar  acquaint- 
ance only  served  to  deepen  while  it  yet 
lived  and  before  the  axeman  came. 
Many  a  time  I  returned  to  build  my 
camp-fire  by  it  and  have  a  day  or  a 
night  in  its  solitary  and  noble  com- 
pany. I  learned  afterwards  that  it  had 
been  given  the  name  "Old  Pine,"  and 
it  certainly  had  an  impressiveness 
4 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

quite  compatible  with  the  age  and  dig- 
nity which  go  with  a  thousand  years 
of  life. 

When,  one  day,  the  sawmill-man  at 
Mancos  wrote,  "Come,  we  are  about 
to  log  your  old  pine,"  I  started  at 
once,  regretting  that  a  thing  which 
seemed  to  me  so  human,  as  well  as  so 
noble,  must  be  killed. 

I  went  with  the  axemen  who  were 
to  cut  the  old  pine  down.  A  grand 
and  impressive  tree  he  was.  Never 
have  I  seen  so  much  individuality,  so 
much  character,  in  a  tree.  Although 
lightning  had  given  him  a  bald  crown, 
he  was  still  a  healthy  giant,  and  was 
waving  evergreen  banners  more  than 
one  hundred  and  fifteen  feet  above  the 
earth.  His  massive  trunk,  eight  feet  in 
diameter  at  the  level  of  my  breast, 
5 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

was  covered  with  a  thick,  rough,  gol- 
den-brown bark  which  was  broken 
into  irregular  plates.  Several  of  his 
arms  were  bent  and  broken.  Alto- 
gether, he  presented  a  timeworn  but 
heroic  appearance. 

It  is  almost  a  marvel  that  trees 
should  live  to  become  the  oldest  of 
living  things.  Fastened  in  one  place, 
their  struggle  is  incessant  and  severe. 
From  the  moment  a  baby  tree  is  born 
—  from  the  instant  it  casts  its  tiny 
shadow  upon  the  ground  —  until 
death,  it  is  in  danger  from  insects  and 
animals.  It  cannot  move  to  avoid 
danger.  It  cannot  run  away  to  escape 
enemies.  Fixed  in  one  spot,  almost 
helpless,  it  must  endure  flood  and 
drought,  fire  and  storm,  insects  and 
earthquakes,  or  die. 
6 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

Trees,  like  people,  struggle  for  exist- 
ence, and  an  aged  tree,  like  an  aged 
person,  has  not  only  a  striking  appear- 
ance, but  an  interesting  biography.  I 
have  read  the  autobiographies  of 
many  century-old  trees,  and  have 
found  their  life-stories  strange  and 
impressive.  The  yearly  growth,  or  an- 
nual ring  of  wood  with  which  trees  en- 
velop themselves,  is  embossed  with  so 
many  of  their  experiences  that  this 
annual  ring  of  growth  literally  forms 
an  autobiographic  diary  of  the  tree's 
life. 

I  wanted  to  read  Old  Pine's  auto- 
biography. A  veteran  pine  that  had 
stood  on  the  southern  Rockies  and 
struggled  and  triumphed  through  the 
changing  seasons  of  hundreds  of  years 
must  contain  a  rare  life-story.  From 
7 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

his  stand  between  the  Mesa  and  the 
pine-plumed  mountain,  he  had  seen 
the  panorama  of  the  seasons  and  many 
a  strange  pageant;  he  had  beheld  what 
scenes  of  animal  and  human  strife, 
what  storms  and  convulsions  of  na- 
ture! Many  a  wondrous  secret  he  had 
locked  within  his  tree  soul.  Yet,  al- 
though he  had  not  recorded  what  he 
had  seen,  I  knew  that  he  had  kept  a 
fairly  accurate  diary  of  his  own  per- 
sonal experience.  This  I  knew  the  saw 
would  reveal,  and  this  I  had  deter- 
mined to  see. 

Nature  matures  a  million  conifer 
seeds  for  each  one  she  chooses  for 
growth,  so  we  can  only  speculate  as  to 
the  selection  of  the  seed  from  which 
sprung  this  storied  pine.  It  may  be 
that  the  cone  in  which  it  matured  was 
8 


SOME    OF    UOLD    PINE\s"    NEIGHBORS 
(Western  Yellow  Pines) 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

crushed  into  the  earth  by  the  hoof  of 
a  passing  deer.  It  may  have  been  hid- 
den by  a  jay;  or,  as  is  more  likely, 
the  tree  may  have  grown  from  one  of 
the  uneaten  cones  which  a  squirrel 
had  buried  for  winter  food.  Fremont 
squirrels  are  the  principal  nurserymen 
for  all  the  Western  pineries.  Each  au- 
tumn they  harvest  a  heavy  percent- 
age of  the  cone  crop  and  bury  it  for 
winter.  The  seeds  in  the  uneaten 
cones  germinate,  and  each  year  count- 
less thousands  of  conifers  grow  from 
the  seeds  planted  by  these  squirrels. 
It  may  be  that  the  seed  from  which 
Old  Pine  burst  had  been  planted  by 
an  ancient  ancestor  of  the  protest- 
ing Fremont  squirrel  whom  we  found 
that  day  in  apparent  possession  of  the 
premises;  or  this  seed  may  have  been 
9 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

in  a  cone  which  simply  bounded  or 
blew  into  a  hole,  where  the  seed  found 
sufficient  mould  and  moisture  to  give 
it  a  start  in  life. 


n 


II 

Two  loggers  swung  their  axes :  at  the 
first  blow  a  Fremont  squirrel  came  out 
of  a  hole  at  the  base  of  a  dead  limb 
near  the  top  of  the  tree  and  made  an 
aggressive  claim  of  ownership,  setting 
up  a  vociferous  protest  against  the 
cutting.  As  his  voice  was  unheeded, 
he  came  scolding  down  the  tree, 
13 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

jumped  off  one  of  the  lower  limbs,  and 
took  refuge  in  a  young  pine  that  stood 
near  by.  From  time  to  time  he  came 
out  on  the  top  of  the  limb  nearest  to 
us,  and,  with  a  wry  face,  fierce  whis- 
kers, and  violent  gestures,  directed  a 
torrent  of  abuse  at  the  axemen  who 
were  delivering  death-blows  to  Old 
Pine. 

The  old  pine's  enormous  weight 
caused  him  to  fall  heavily,  and  he 
came  to  earth  with  tremendous  force 
and  struck  on  an  elbow  of  one  of  his 
stocky  arms.  The  force  of  the  fall  not 
only  broke  the  trunk  in  two,  but  badly 
shattered  it.  The  damage  to  the  log 
was  so  general  that  the  sawmill-man 
said  it  would  not  pay  to  saw  it  into 
lumber  and  that  it  could  rot  on  the 
spot. 

14 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

I  had  come  a  long  distance  for  the 
express  purpose  of  deciphering  Old 
Pine's  diary  as  the  scroll  of  his  life 
should  be  laid  open  in  the  sawmill. 
The  abandonment  of  the  shattered 
form  compelled  the  adoption  of  an- 
other way  of  getting  at  his  story.  Re- 
ceiving permission  to  do  as  I  pleased 
with  his  remains,  I  at  once  began  to 
cut  and  split  both  the  trunk  and  the 
limbs,  and  to  transcribe  their  strange 
records.  Day  after  day  I  worked.  I 
dug  up  the  roots  and  thoroughly  dis- 
sected them,  and  with  the  aid  of  a 
magnifier  I  studied  the  trunk,  the 
roots,  and  the  limbs. 

I  carefully  examined  the  ba>se  of  his 

stump,  and  in  it  I  found  ten  hundred 

and  forty-seven  rings  of  growth!   He 

tad  lived  through   a  thousand   and 

15 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

forty-seven  memorable  years.  As  he 
was  cut  down  in  1903,  his  birth  pro- 
bably occurred  in  856. 

In  looking  over  the  rings  of  growth, 
I  found  that  a  few  of  them  were  much 
thicker  than  the  others;  and  these 
thick  rings,  or  coats  of  wood,  tell  of 
favorable  seasons.  There  were  also  a 
few  extremely  thin  rings  of  growth.  In 
places  two  and  even  three  of  these 
were  together.  These  were  the  results 
of  unfavorable  seasons,  —  of  drought 
or  cold.  The  rings  of  trees  also  show 
healed  wounds,  and  tell  of  burns,  bites, 
and  bruises,  of  torn  bark  and  broken 
arms.  Old  Pine  not  only  received  in- 
juries in  his  early  years,  but  from  time 
to  time  throughout  his  life.  The  some- 
what kinked  condition  of  several  of 
the  rings  of  growth,  beginning  with 
16 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

the  twentieth,  shows  that  at  the  age 
of  twenty  he  sustained  an  injury 
which  resulted  in  a  severe  curvature  of 
the  spine,  and  that  for  some  years  he 
was  somewhat  stooped.  I  was  unable 
to  make  out  from  his  diary  whether 
this  injury  was  the  result  of  a  tree  or 
some  object  falling  upon  him  and  pin- 
ning him  down,  or  whether  his  back 
had  been  overweighted  and  bent  by 
wet,  clinging  snow.  As  I  could  find  no 
scars  or  bruises,  I  think  that  snow 
must  have  been  the  cause  of  the  in- 
jury. However,  after  a  few  years  he 
straightened  up  with  youthful  vitality 
and  seemed  to  outgrow  and  forget  the 
experience. 

A  century  of  tranquil  life  followed, 
and    during    these    years    the   rapid 
growth  tells  of  good  seasons  as  well  as 
17 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

good  soil.  This  rapid  growth  also 
shows  that  there  could  not  have  been 
any  crowding  neighbors  to  share  the 
sun  and  the  soil.  The  tree  had  grown 
evenly  in  all  quarters,  and  the  pith  of 
the  tree  was  in  the  center.  But  had 
one  tree  grown  close,  on  that  quarter 
the  old  pine  would  have  grown  slower 
than  on  the  others  and  have  been 
thinner,  and  the  pith  would  thus  have 
been  away  from  the  tree's  center. 

When  the  old  pine  was  just  com- 
pleting his  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
fifth  ring  of  growth,  he  met  with  an  ac- 
cident which  I  can  account  for  only  by 
assuming  that  a  large  tree  that  grew 
several  yards  away  blew  over,  and  in 
falling,  stabbed  him  in  the  side  with 
two  dead  limbs.  His  bark  was  broken 
and  torn,  but  this  healed  in  due  time. 
18 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

Short  sections  of  the  dead  limbs  broke 
off,  however,  and  were  embedded  in 
the  old  pine.  Twelve  years'  growth 
covered  them,  and  they  remained 
hidden  from  view  until  my  splitting 
revealed  them.  Two  other  wounds 
started  promptly  to  heal  and,  with  one 
exception,  did  so. 

A  year  or  two  later  some  ants  and 
borers  began  excavating  their  deadly 
winding  ways  in  the  old  pine.  They 
probably  started  to  work  in  one  of  the 
places  injured  by  the  falling  tree. 
They  must  have  had  some  advantage, 
or  else  something  must  have  happened 
to  the  nuthatches  and  chickadees  that 
year,  for,  despite  the  vigilance  of  these 
birds,  both  the  borers  and  the  ants  suc- 
ceeded in  establishing  colonies  that 
threatened  injury  and  possibly  death. 
19 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

Fortunately  relief  came.  One  day 
the  chief  surgeon  of  all  the  Southwest- 
ern pineries  came  along.  This  surgeon 
was  the  Texas  woodpecker.  He  prob- 
ably did  not  long  explore  the  ridges 
and  little  furrows  of  the  bark  before  he 
discovered  the  wound  or  heard  these 
hidden  insects  working.  After  a  brief 
examination,  holding  his  ear  to  the  bark 
for  a  moment  to  get  the  location  of  the 
tree's  deadly  foe  beneath,  he  was 
ready  to  act.  He  made  two  successful 
operations.  Not  only  did  these  require 
him  to  cut  deeply  into  the  old  pine 
and  take  out  the  borers,  but  he  may 
also  have  had  to  come  back  from  time 
to  time  to  dress  the  wounds  by  de- 
vouring the  ant-colonies  which  may 
have  persisted  in  taking  possession  of 
them.  The  wounds  finally  healed,  and 
20 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

only  the  splitting  of  the  affected  parts 
revealed  these  records,  all  filled  with 
pitch  and  preserved  for  nearly  nine 
hundred  years. 

Following  this,  an  even  tenor 
marked  his  life  for  nearly  three  cen- 
turies. This  quiet  existence  came  to 
an  end  in  the  summer  of  1301,  when  a 
stroke  of  lightning  tore  a  limb  out  of 
his  round  top  and  badly  shattered  a 
shoulder.  He  had  barely  recovered 
from  this  injury  when  a  violent  wind 
tore  off  several  of  his  arms.  During 
the  summer  of  1348  he  lost  two  of  his 
largest  arms.  These  were  sound,  and 
more  than  a  foot  in  diameter  at  the 
points  of  breakage.  As  these  were 
broken  by  a  down-pressing  weight  or 
force,  we  may  attribute  the  breaks  to 
accumulations  of  snow. 
21 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

The  oldest,  largest  portion  of  a  tree 
is  the  short  section  immediately  above 
the  ground,  and,  as  this  lower  section 
is  the  most  exposed  to  accidents  or 
to  injuries  from  enemies,  it  generally 
bears  evidence  of  having  suffered  the 
most.  Within  its  scroll  are  usually 
found  the  most  extensive  and  inter- 
esting autobiographical  impressions. 

It  is  doubtful  if  there  is  any  portion 
of  the  earth  upon  which  there  are  so 
many  deadly  struggles  as  upon  the 
earth  around  the  trunk  of  a  tree. 
Upon  this  small  arena  there  are  bat- 
tles fierce  and  wild;  here  nature  is 
"red  in  tooth  and  claw."  When  a  tree 
is  small  and  tender,  countless  insects 
come  to  feed  upon  it.  Birds  come  to  it 
to  devour  these  insects.  Around  the 
tree  are  daily  almost  merciless  fights 
22 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

for  existence.  These  death-struggles 
occur  not  only  in  the  daytime,  but  in 
the  night.  Mice,  rats,  and  rabbits  de- 
stroy millions  of  young  trees.  These 
bold  animals  often  flay  baby  trees  in 
the  daylight,  and  while  at  their  deadly 
feast  many  a  time  have  they  been  sur- 
prised by  hawks,  and  then  they  are  at 
a  banquet  where  they  themselves  are 
eaten.  The  owl,  the  faithful  night- 
watchman  of  trees,  often  swoops  down 
at  night,  and  as  a  result  some  little 
tree  is  splashed  with  the  blood  of  the 
very  animal  that  came  to  feed  upon  it. 
The  lower  section  of  Old  Pine's 
trunk  contained  records  which  I  found 
interesting.  One  of  these  in  particular 
aroused  my  imagination.  I  was  sawing 
off  a  section  of  this  lower  portion  when 
the  saw,  with  a  buzz-z-z-z,  suddenly 
23 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

jumped.  The  object  struck  was  harder 
than  the  saw.  I  wondered  what  it 
could  be,  and,  cutting  the  wood  care- 
fully away,  laid  bare  a  flint  arrowhead. 
Close  to  this  one  I  found  another,  and 
then  with  care  I  counted  the  rings  of 
growth  to  find  out  the  year  that  these 
had  wounded  Old  Pine.  The  outer 
ring  which  these  arrowheads  had 
pierced  was  the  six  hundred  and  thir- 
tieth, so  that  the  year  of  this  occur<» 
rence  was  1486. 

Had  an  Indian  bent  his  bow  and 
shot  at  a  bear  that  had  stood  at  bay 
backed  up  against  this  tree?  Or  was 
there  around  this  tree  a  battle  among 
Indian  tribes?  Is  it  possible  that  at 
this  place  some  Cliff-Dweller  scouts 
encountered  their  advancing  foe  from 
the  north  and  opened  hostilities?  It 
24 


w 

Q 


W 


H 
H 

§ 


I 


O 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

may  be  that  around  Old  Pine  was 
fought  the  battle  that  is  said  to  have 
decided  the  fate  of  that  mysterious 
race,  the  Cliff-Dwellers.  The  imagina- 
tion insists  on  speculating  with  these 
two  arrowheads,  though  they  form  a 
fascinating  clue  that  leads  us  to  no 
definite  conclusion.  But  the  fact  re- 
mains that  Old  Pine  was  wounded  by 
two  Indian  arrowheads  some  time 
during  his  six  hundred  and  thirtieth 
summer. 

The  year  that  Columbus  discovered 
America,  Old  Pine  was  a  handsome 
giant  with  a  round  head  held  more 
than  one  hundred  feet  above  the  earth. 
He  was  six  hundred  and  thirty-six 
years  old,  and  with  the  coming  of  the 
Spanish  adventurers  his  lower  trunk 
was  given  new  events  to  record.  The 
25 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

year  1540  was  a  particularly  memora- 
ble one  for  him.  This  year  brought  the 
first  horses  and  bearded  men  into  the 
drama  which  was  played  around  him. 
This  year,  for  the  first  time,  he  felt  the 
edge  of  steel  and  the  tortures  of  fire. 
The  old  chronicles  say  that  the  Span- 
ish explorers  found  the  cliff-houses  in 
the  year  1540.  I  believe  that  during 
this  year  a  Spanish  exploring  party 
may  have  camped  beneath  Old  Pine 
and  built  a  fire  against  his  instep,  and 
that  some  of  the  explorers  hacked  him 
with  an  axe.  The  old  pine  had  distinct 
records  of  axe  and  fire  markings  during 
the  year  1540.  It  was  not  common  for 
the  Indians  of  the  West  to  burn  or 
mutilate  trees,  and  it  was  common  for 
the  Spaniards  to  do  so,  and  as  these 
hackings  in  the  tree  seemed  to  have 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

been  made  with  some  edged  tool 
sharper  than  any  possessed  by  the  In- 
dians, it  at  least  seems  probable  that 
they  were  made  by  the  Spaniards. 
At  any  rate,  from  the  year  1540 
until  the  day  of  his  death,  Old  Pine 
carried  these  scars  on  his  instep. 

As  the  average  yearly  growth  of  the 
old  pine  was  about  the  same  as  in  trees 
similarly  situated  at  the  present  time, 
I  suppose  that  climatic  conditions  in 
his  early  days  must  have  been  similar 
to  the  climatic  conditions  of  to-day. 
His  records  indicate  periods  of  even 
tenor  of  climate,  a  year  of  extremely 
poor  conditions,  occasionally  a  year 
crowned  with  a  bountiful  wood  har- 
vest. From  1540  to  1762  I  found  little 
of  special  interest.  In  1762,  however, 
the  season  was  not  regular.  After  the 
27 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

ring  was  well  started,  something,  per- 
haps a  cold  wave,  for  a  time  checked 
his  growth,  and  as  a  result  the  wood 
for  that  one  year  resembled  two  years' 
growth;  yet  the  difference  between 
this  double  or  false  ring  and  a  regular 
one  was  easily  detected.  Old  Pine's 
"hard  times"  experience  seems  to 
have  been  during  the  years  1804 
and  1805.  I  think  it  probable  that 
those  were  years  of  drought.  Dur- 
ing 1804  the  layer  of  wood  was  the 
thinnest  in  his  life,  and  for  1805  the 
only  wood  I  could  find  was  a  layer 
which  only  partly  covered  the  trunk 
of  the  tree,  and  this  was  exceedingly 
thin. 

From  time  to  time  in  the  old  pine's 
record,  I  came  across  what  seemed  to 
be  indications  of  an  earthquake  shock; 
28 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

but  late  in  1811  or  early  in  1812,  I 
think  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  experi- 
enced a  violent  shock,  for  he  made  ex- 
tensive records  of  it.  This  earthquake 
occurred  after  the  sap  had  ceased  to 
flow  in  1811,  and  before  it  began  to 
flow  in  the  spring  of  1812.  In  places 
the  wood  was  checked  and  shattered. 
At  one  point,  some  distance  from  the 
ground,  there  was  a  bad  horizontal 
break.  Two  big  roots  were  broken  in 
two,  and  that  quarter  of  the  tree  which 
faced  the  cliffs  had  suffered  from  a  rock 
bombardment.  I  suppose  the  violence 
of  the  quake  displaced  many  rocks, 
and  some  of  these,  as  they  came 
bounding  down  the  mountain-side, 
collided  with  Old  Pine.  One,  of  about 
five  pounds'  weight,  struck  him  so 
violently  in  the  side  that  it  remained 
29 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

embedded  there.  After  some  years 
the  wound  was  healed  over,  but  this 
fragment  remained  in  the  tree  until  I 
released  it. 

During  1859  some  one  made  an  axe- 
mark  on  the  old  pine  that  may  have 
been  intended  for  a  trail-blaze,  and 
during  the  same  year  another  fire 
badly  burned  and  scarred  his  ankle. 
I  wonder  if  some  prospectors  came 
this  way  in  1859  and  made  camp  by 
him. 

Another  record  of  man's  visits  to  the 
tree  was  made  in  the  summer  of  1881, 
when  I  think  a  hunting  or  outing 
party  may  have  camped  near  here  and 
amused  themselves  by  shooting  at  a 
mark  on  Old  Pine's  ankle.  Several 
modern  rifle-bullets  were  found  em- 
bedded in  the  wood  around  or  just  be- 
30 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

neath  a  blaze  which  was  made  on  the 
tree  the  same  year  in  which  the  bullets 
had  entered  it.  As  both  these  marks 
were  made  during  the  year  1881,  it  is 
at  least  possible  that  this  year  the  old 
pine  was  used  as  the  background  for  a 
target  during  a  shooting  contest. 

While  I  was  working  over  the  old 
pine,  a  Fremont  squirrel  who  lived 
near  by  used  every  day  to  stop  in  his 
busy  harvesting  of  pine-cones  to  look 
on  and  scold  men  As  I  watched  him 
placing  his  cones  in  a  hole  in  the 
ground  under  the  pine-needles,  I  often 
wondered  if  one  of  his  buried  cones 
would  remain  there  uneaten,  to  ger- 
minate and  expand  ever  green  into  the 
air,  and  become  a  noble  giant  to  live  as 
long  and  as  useful  a  life  as  Old  Pine.  I 
found  myself  trying  to  picture  the 
31 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

scenes  in  which  this  tree  would  stand 
when  the  birds  came  singing  back 
from  the  Southland  in  the  springtime 
of  the  year  3000. 


ni 


AFTER  I  had  finished  my  work  of 
splitting,  studying,  and  deciphering 
the  fragments  of  the  old  pine,  I  went 
to  the  sawmill  and  arranged  for  the 
men  to  come  over  that  evening  after  I 
had  departed,  and  burn  every  piece 
and  vestige  of  the  venerable  old  tree. 
I  told  them  I  should  be  gone  by  dark 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

on  a  trip  to  the  summit  of  Mesa  Verde, 
where  I  was  to  visit  a  gnarled  old 
cedar-  Then  I  went  back  and  piled 
into  a  pyramid  every  fragment  of 
root  and  trunk  and  broken  branch. 
Seating  myself  upon  this  pyramid,  I 
spent  some  time  that  afternoon  gaz- 
ing through  the  autumn  sun-glow  at 
the  hazy  Mesa  Verde,  while  my  mind 
rebuilt  and  shifted  the  scenes  of  the 
long,  long  drama  in  which  Old  Pine 
had  played  his  part  and  of  which  he 
had  given  us  but  a  few  fragmentary 
records.  I  lingered  there  dreaming  un- 
til twilight.  I  thought  of  the  cycles 
during  which  he  had  stood  patient  in 
his  appointed  place,  and  my  imagina- 
tion busied  itself  with  the  countless 
experiences  that  had  been  recorded, 
and  the  scenes  and  pageants  he  had 


> 

4 


i 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

witnessed  but  of  which  he  had  made 
no  record.  I  wondered  if  he  had  en- 
joyed the  changing  of  seasons.  I 
knew  that  he  had  often  boomed  or 
hymned  in  the  storm  or  the  breeze. 
Many  a  monumental  robe  of  snow- 
flowers  had  he  worn.  More  than  a 
thousand  times  he  had  beheld  the 
earth  burst  into  bloom  amid  happy 
songs  of  mating  birds;  hundreds  of 
times  in  summer  he  had  worn  count- 
less crystal  rain- jewels  in  the  sunlight 
of  the  breaking  storm,  while  the  bril- 
liant rainbow  came  and  vanished  on 
the  near-by  mountain-side.  Ten  thou- 
sand times  he  had  stood  silent  in  the 
lonely  light  of  the  white  and  mystic 
moon. 

Twilight  was  fading  into  darkness 
when  I  arose  and  started  on  my  night 
37 


A  THOUSAND-YEAR  PINE 

journey  for  the  summit  of  Mesa  Verde. 
When  I  arrived  at  the  top  of  the  Mesa, 
I  looked  back  and  saw  a  pyramid  of 
golden  flame  standing  out  in  the 
darkness. 


